The Veil in France: Twenty Years of Media Coverage (1989–2010)
Résumé
This chapter analyses public debates around the ‘headscarf affair’ (1989–2004) and the ‘burqa affair’ (2009–2010) in France by questioning the mediatisation of the Islamic signs-symbols based on notions of visibility and spatiality. Ranging from news stories to the enactment of laws, these public debates mark the transition from a social visibility to a media visibility of the veil, putting into evidence the transformation of media controversies into national affairs and public issues. Based on the study of the coverage of the French national press, this chapter traces the genealogy of discourses that constructed the media visibility of the veil in France from 1989 to 2010. By means of a semiotic approach, it analyses the images and discourses that have constituted the sources of meaning of recent public debates on Islam in France. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how media coverage constructed a degraded and stigmatised visibility of the veil (‘ostensible’, ‘over-visible’, sign of ‘proselytising’ act of ‘concealment’), legitimising thereby a geographic extension of the ban on the veil from schools to the streets. The analysis of the prohibitionist discourses of veil public debates reveals the construction of norms of Islamic visibility (‘ostentation’ vs. ‘neutrality’; ‘transparency’ vs. ‘concealment’), as well as a new political management of public appearances (‘marked-unmarked’; ‘illicit-licit’; ‘minority-majority’). We argue then that the increasing media visibility of the Islamic veil contributes to a legal redefinition of French public space. This chapter seeks to contribute to a broader reflection on the transformation of contemporary public spaces with regard to the increasing media visibility of the veil and, more broadly, of Islam, a reflection that is particularly suitable for the European context.